Nude Walker: A Novel

by Bathsheba Monk

“I think the most beautiful things in the world are things in flux,” says Kat Warren-Bineki, the heroine of Nude Walker. Everything about Kat’s world is in flux. She hails from Warrenside, Pennsylvania, a once prosperous town named after her mother’s family. With the death of the steel industry, Warrenside has fallen on hard times; when its economy falters, Kat and her parents are among the few citizens still eking out a living there.

 

And then there’s Kat’s love life. As the young, beautiful granddaughter of a proud old-guard industrialist, she has plenty of suitors and a longtime boyfriend; certainly she has no business falling in love with Max Asad. After all, Max is the aloof only son of a newly arrived Lebanese entrepreneur who, despite the resistance of Warrenside’s traditionalists, has bought up most of its dilapidated downtown and is trying to get it off life support.

 

But when Max and Kat return from Afghanistan, where both served with the National Guard, they share a series of intriguing encounters, and soon neither can deny that their romance has changed them. Kat forfeits her social standing by declaring love for a bitterly resented foreigner, and when Max’s heart wins out, he jeopardizes his father’s dreams for a brighter, better Warrenside. As their families feud (sometimes comically, sometimes ferociously), the old town braces for an epic flood, and the city’s denizens try frantically to realize their ambitions—with love, lust, insurance fraud, hallucinations . . . any means of outrunning their obsolescence.

 

Above all, Nude Walker is a story of forbidden love seen through the prism of post-industrial America. Bathsheba Monk writes with flinty wit and warm spirit, but she’s unlike other writers we know. In a voice as true as it is disarming, she depicts the kaleidoscopic tensions between generations and cultures. As Library Journal said about her, “Monk makes us see that we are all exiles in a changing world.” In Nude Walker, she offers an unlikely romance about the fantastical myths we weave to define ourselves in unmoored times.

306 pages, Hardcover

Published March 1, 2011

About the author

Bathsheba Monk is the author of seven novels, plays (Lois's Wedding) and short memoir (Clarence H. Carter, Favorite Son). She writes YA under the pen name Maddy Wells. She loves to talk writing with fellow readers and writers.
Now You See It...Stories from Cokesville, PA
Nude Walker
Dead Wrong
Dead Silence
Dead Karma
Have Mercy by Maddy Wells
Have Love by Maddy Wells
Lois's Wedding (play)
Clarence H. Carter: Favorite Son (short memoir)

Reviews

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second book by Bathsheba Monk that has held me from beginning to end. There's something about her writing that even when the situation and characters seem out-sized, they become real and down to earth within her earthy, poignant style. This is a wonderful read filled with fascinating characters. It's my new favorite gift for hostesses and birthdays.

[Chrystal · Rating 1 out of 5]

Eh.

[Gretchen Rings · Rating 1 out of 5]

I skimmed.

[Mike Cuthbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This episodic novel is set in a small town, Warrenside, in Pennsylvania, and in Afghanistan, briefly. It concerns members of the 501st, a non-combat unit, about to leave after a tour of duty. Kat Warren-Bineki is the beautiful heroine of the story. In the opening pages we also meet Max Asad, the darkly handsome translator of the unit and Jenna, a sexually-driven fundamentalist Christian. All of them are from Warrenside, as is Duck, the assumptive fiancé of Kat. They have been going together since high school. On the plane home from Afghanistan, Kat gets to know and become fascinated by the learned and detached Asad who is Arab but Christian. When they get home we meet more characters and the plot thickens intensely. In the best American tradition, most of the 501st hate Asad because he’s seen as an Arab. It doesn’t help that his father owns most of the town. We also meet Wind, a shaman in her own mind, also known as the Love Guru. Though not trusted because she is Native American, many of the women in town go to her regularly to get love advice. Barbara Warren, Kat’s mother and rapidly aging member by marriage of the Warren family, founders of Warrenside, suffers from dementia that causes her to take nude walks periodically. She and her husband are definitely on the downslope of success. Mike Warren has, in fact, embezzled some three million dollars from an insurance company and is just a step ahead of them as things deteriorate. Kat eventually alters the assumed plot of all their lives by falling in love with Max and suffering the same racial hatred that Max has tolerated only because of his superior wealth and education. A disastrous evening at the local bar results in violence by Max’s sister, Houda, and the town is in a confused uproar. A lot of action is jammed into the final chapters of the novel but it all works out logically and symmetrically for the reader. Kat is a bewitching narrator of her chapters of the book—all the characters have their own chapters and their own points of view—and her relationships with Duck and Max are complex and passionate, as is Duck’s strange affair with Jenna. This is not the inter-racial, inter-religious book I suspected it would be, though those are both mixed into the plot. It is, instead, filled with memorable characters with striking events impacting their lives and the entire town.

[Mary Lawlor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel makes an addition to the library of classic American literature. Located in a rust belt city (a fictional combination of Bethlehem and Alletown, PA) and populated by a roster of precisely cut, utterly convincing characters, it takes us straight into the heart of a dying world--the old, industrial, urban scene where a ruling class used to look way down on an army of workers. This once seemingly inevitable, unchangeable world, beloved by some, hated by many, is quickly going down the tubes. Nude Walker dramatizes in riveting ways the conditions that demand of the younger generation that they live differently. Class conflict is overlaid with ethnic tension and strains between the sexes as Nude Walker moves toward an apocalyptic crescendo and a gripping conclusion. The story does more than show the social effects of life in the shadow of the dark, satanic mills. It lifts this dying world out of its own mud and suggests, without a trace of sentimentality, how things might, to put it simply, change. Several voices tell the story. Each of these character/narrators speaks in his or her own idiom, at their own pace, and displays in strikingly convincing ways their psychological and emotional guts. At times the novel feels like an updated panorama of Walt Whitman's American. At others it recalls some of Huck Finn's most frightening moments. At yet others it has the sharp wit and regional realism of Flannery O'Connor. But Monk has created voices of her own and a story that looks very closely, with a critical but sympathetic eye, at the kind of place that could really use such literary attention.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

A novel weaving together different characters from a post-industrial Pennsylvania town, Nude Walker weaves in the ecological, cultural and personal costs of 21st century war and 20th century industry, but does it with a healthy dose of cheek. The prose keeps what could be a heavy novel more amusing than depressing by focusing on the characters. For those of us living in post-industrial cities, with the returning soldiers and springing up of natural gas wells, this book makes entirely too much sense.

In the interest of full disclosure, there are a couple notes I should add: I know Bathsheba, and I was a pretty big fan of her first book. Also, the area is basically a character in the novel, so readers not from Eastern or Central Pennsylvania may not find the same compelling atmosphere. Still, just as those not familiar with San Francisco can still relish in the ups and downs of Armistad Maupin's characters, just about everyone should at least find this book a timely, insightful look at a part of America that could use a literary champion.

[Laura L. Weller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This Romeo and Juliet whisper has a deep love interest with rival families and disord that strums the strings of country alegiance and community unrest. The utter confusion in the foreign and domestic environments, and the lives of the characters, reflects beautifully in the writing that switches from scenes and locations, situations and information to exhale the same confusing air as the characters. It absolutes captivates me. There is ingenuity in the characters and I found the situation of parental dimensia and discord in the failing romance believable from beginning to end. The characters feel interesting, worth following and the plot is anxiety-producing on their behalf. However, points off for the ending. I prefer a more loosely interpreted ending in a novel with so much chaos and this one ties up the loose ends. But that's just me.

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

Standout memorable characters. I especially held onto a quote by Mr. Asad who commented on Lady Luck"s four stages: I reign, I have reigned, I shall reign and I have no kingdom.

It seems to me the 4 stages of life as we know it. And it gives me hope. And I think its brilliant.

I also liked the surprise ending with the Love Guru, Wind and the portrayal of the less likeable characters (lovesick Duck, unrepentant Jenna, Shit out of luck Camacho and irrepressibly modern Arab American Houda...etc).

I think the author is very cool! I wish I could meet her!

[Carol Ellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good read. It touches on social issues such as mental illness, environmental problems, class issues, and racism against those of Middle Eastern descent; and, it's a fun to read love story. The characters are diverse and interesting, especially Windstorm, the psychic love shamon. I savored it and was sorry when it ended.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author captured the eastern town in Pennsylvania well. The story of an old worn out town with old fashioned ways of thinking were brought to modern times with a post 9/11 feeling. We fight against a foreign enemy in the middle east and we fight an even more frightening enemy at home. Fear, hate, and ignorance are dangerous enough, but when paired with power can be deadly.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pleasantly surprised -- excellent complex characters that generate sympathy even if flawed. Nice interwoven issues of urban/US decline, development, post Iraq war, etc. Bonus, local author, so thinly veiled portrait of Bethlehem and Lehigh Valley.

[Laura Libricz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this story. It is an insightful, well-written fun, tragic, reflective kind of book that sticks with you after you finish it.

[Armi Angue · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unpredictable.